RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit 2012 for iPad and iPhone Review

For Fantasy Baseball aficionados, draft day may just be the greatest day on the calendar. It’s certainly among the most important. Today we’ll look at managing your draft with the RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit 2012 for iPad and iPhone.

What is included in the “Draft Kit?”

Included in the RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit 2012 are cheat sheets, depth charts, Closer list, latest news, analysis, updates. Many of the things you need to prepare for your fantasy draft. The killer feature of the app, however, it’s ability to track and manage your own live fantasy draft.

The first thing you’ll probably want to do is setup and customize your draft based on your league’s settings. I was pleased to see that the app has plenty of draft options. Rotisserie or Points scoring, loads of scoring categories, Snake, Straight Draft, or Auction draft styles, AL, NL, or mixed leagues, and adjustable roster sizes.

If you are using the app for multiple fantasy drafts, you’ll be able to create multiple drafts and customize each draft’s settings, scoring, etc.

Note: Auction values only appear when you select Auction style draft.

The button along the bottom allow you to navigate through the app. By default, you’ll see the value based rankings displayed in the cheat sheets section. Buttons along the top allow you to filter by position, available, drafted, and watchlist.

If you prefer to use a your own rankings, or tweak the RotoWire rankings, you can do so by selecting the sort button, choosing “Manual,” and then re-ordering the rankings by drag and drop.

During the draft you’ll find players on the cheat sheet as they are selected and then choose “My Team” to pick them yourself, or “Other Team” for players picked on other teams.

There is no way to show specifically which other team choose which players. Some may find that to be a limitation or missing feature, but I prefer the simplicity of just designating players as “Other Team,” especially since my leagues utilize a draft board.

After selecting “My Team,” you’ll need to designate the players position. Warning: It will allow you to pick a player at a position even if he isn’t eligible for it. The player’s main position will come up by default so it shouldn’t be a big issue, but it’s something to keep an eye on. ( Especially if you plan on enjoying a few beers during the draft) It would be a bummer to get to the end of the draft and suddenly realize you inadvertently placed Jacoby Ellsbury at Corner Infielder.

As the players are selected they are designated on the cheatsheet by a green check mark for your team and a red “X” for every other chosen player. You may prefer to filter by “Available” players along the top so as not to clutter the cheatsheet players already off the board.

Another virtual necessity that’s included is the depth charts of each MLB team. Even cooler is that you can select players right from the Depth Chart page during the draft. The same goes for the “Prospects” section.

There is also a Closers section that gives you the stability, health, and next pitchers in line for the closers job for each major league team. You can’t select players from this screen, but it does provide vital information.

Along with the draft features, you’ll also get the Latest News, Blogs, and Articles from RotoWire to help you prepare for the draft, or to refer to on draft day while you‘re waiting to pick.

Cost: $4.99

Overview

For what it’s worth, I used the RotoWire Fantasy Football Draft kit last fall for my draft and really loved it. I haven’t seen anything yet in my testing to deter me from using this app for my upcoming Fantasy Baseball draft this spring. I will be reviewing the RotoWorld Draft app in the coming days, so we’ll see how that one matches up, but my initial feeling is you can’t go wrong with RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Draft 2012 app.

One other point of note, I love using my iPad for drafting, but I’m not sure I’d want to use my iPhone or iPod Touch simply due to the size.